The private office is dead, long live the private office!

As someone who has been a vocal critic of open plan offices over the last several years, while also gleefully taking in the rise of remote work, I'm starting to wonder if it's time to give up the fight.

I find the sister phenomenon of the coworking space illuminating. An intentional open plan community for those fortunate souls privileged enough to look the quiet and privacy of a home office dead in the eye, turn their back, and instead pay a monthly fee for its near opposite.

It's almost like the open plan and the home office represent the yin-yang of working environments.

Companies with large distributed workforces often have hot-desking arrangements in their facilities with a pleasing symmetry of a progressive work-from-home policy.

I may be giving up on the idea of employers going back to the days of private offices, and calling the whole discussion moot. Really, what are we more likely to see in the future: more companies building out private offices for their employees, or more companies unleashing their employees upon their own home offices? The answer is so obvious, that I'm not sure it's worth typing.

The private office is dead. Long live the private (home) office!